


damn your love, damn your lies

by msermesth



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Avengers Vol. 5 (2013), M/M, Not A Fix-It, Original Sin (Marvel), Unhappy Ending, hickmanvengers, in that the ending is Avengers #29, mind wipe, nothing's ok, prelude to a beatdown, steve's not ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 09:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12931995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/pseuds/msermesth
Summary: Steve wants to track Tony down and confront him. Everyone else is following their betrayals.But The Watcher is dead, and right now, that’s the mission.





	damn your love, damn your lies

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is awful and it offers no hope.
> 
> Let’s just pretend all of Original Sin happened before Avengers #29. I thought the idea of Steve slowly unraveling throughout Original Sin was too seductive to pass up.  
>   
> This is goes up all the way to Avengers #29, and liberally borrows dialogue from both that issue and Original Sin #3.
> 
> Thanks to [Nix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Evanna3994) for the quick and very helpful beta!

Like it has an actual weight and speed, the truth hits Steve hard. His brain is on fire as all the missing memories find their way back to where they always belonged. The physical sensation only lasts a few moments and then Steve is just standing there—lifting his head from his hands—and surveying the damage Uatu’s eye had left behind. Written on the faces of everyone around him is the same sort of distress Steve is trying to make sense of, but no one looks physically hurt. Frustratingly enough, some of them are even leaving the scene.

Steve sighs. Of course.

The Orb is still standing there, cackling with a glee Steve’s sure only exists for super-villains, which is apparently a category _The Orb_ has risen into. Yet, he doesn’t do much but stand there, so Steve takes his opening and quickly subdues him. It’s only when the man with a giant eyeball for a head is officially in custody that he lets himself scan the crowd and tries to find a familiar flash of black and gold.

He doesn’t find it. Tony must have left with the others.

Figures that he would take the coward’s way out. Steve wants to track Tony down and confront him. Everyone else is following their betrayals.

But The Watcher is dead, and right now, that’s the mission.

 

* * *

 

 

Without Steve asking, Tony studies the bomb’s energy signature and explains it to him like he’s stupid. Like he hasn’t spent the last decade of his life fighting things like this. Steve wants to punch the arrogance off his face, but something is happening with Bruce and there isn’t anyone  else better equipped to study what The Orb left behind.

Steve keeps his hands to himself.

At least Tony keeps his faceplate down.

 

* * *

 

Memories are strange.

Even with all of them back, he can’t process them linearly. The nightmare—four friends staring down at his prone body, and the worst of them outside his line of vision—is the last thing that happened, but it always feels like the beginning. The arguments, the incursions, the broken Infinity Gauntlet flow from that image burned in his mind.

It’s the only context Steve needs.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me, Steve. What did you see… when the bomb exploded?” Nick asks and Steve fights the urge to tear his communication unit from his cowl and hurl it off the building he’s standing on.

Steve doesn’t tell Nick to go fuck himself.

He doesn’t talk about how the nightmare wasn’t a nightmare after all, or how that he’s mere inches from bringing hell down on some of the most powerful men on earth.

Doesn’t tell him what a man he respected has done to him, even if _respect_ is too small a word to use when it comes to Tony. It doesn’t take into account every sideways glance he’s made when he was sure Tony couldn’t see and every late night wondering what Tony would feel like pressed against his body. It doesn’t contain every time they laughed, and fought, and saved the world together.

_Love._  That’s what he felt for Tony.

Now that respect means only as much as Tony’s false, manipulative smiles and that love only makes him want to vomit.

But there is still so much to do. Midas and Exterminatrix are loose, and no one knows yet who killed The Watcher. The Avengers are spread thin at the moment and very few of them are prepared to run a murder investigation.

So Steve says, “… that’s not the mission right now, Nick.”

 

* * *

 

Steve’s been awake for thirty-six hours. Someone asks if he wants to take a brief nap on their journey to the moon, and he shrugs them off.

 

* * *

 

He falls asleep anyway, the physical exertion catching up to him during the silence.

In his dreams, men he thought of as heroes laugh at him.

Tony  _laughs_ at him.

 

* * *

 

There are things Nick isn’t telling him. Big things, and Steve is done with secrets, done with being lied to by his closest friends.

Nick shouldn’t surprise him, as he’s done things like this before. Hell, he’s violated his mind before, making him kill the Prime Minister of Latveria and then taking away any recollection of the event. Even after all these years, the memory of it stings.

It turns out Steve can be molded like putty for the use of greater men in the world. He’s just a pawn in their games, protecting their interests whether he likes it or not.

Nothing else he’s accomplished means anything to them. Not the rank or the experience or their years fighting wars together.

Nick had just told him that these were the types of decisions you had to make when you were the one with the responsibility. He said it like Steve’s never had to make hard decisions before.

But Steve has.

He’s ran SHIELD before. He’s ordered murders and killed people himself. Yet, he’s never done something like this. Never stole a person’s own thoughts, never robbed them of their mental integrity.

And never done it to his friends.

 

* * *

 

Tony’s done this before, too. He made Steve and the rest of the world forget he was Iron Man.

Steve forgave him.

When Steve thinks about that now, he feels like the naive idiot the Illuminati must believe he is.

 

* * *

 

One of his oldest friends is dead. _Nick Fury,_  of all people, is dead.

No one will tell him why.

Steve’s not sure he knows how to handle that.

 

* * *

 

They get to the tower, and even though Steve is itching to storm down to Tony’s workshop and just do it then, he instead makes the decision to go to his room. His muscles are even heavier than his eyes, and his brain is like mud. He’ll be more effective tomorrow.

Steve plans on destroying Tony. If he’s going to succeed, he can’t underestimate him and storm in, just running on fumes and anger.

In the dark of his room, he dreams about Tony. How he explained the Avengers Machine to him. How the way Tony’s eyes lit up made Steve want to lean in and kiss him.

Steve hates that dream the most.

 

* * *

 

“I remember,” Steve hisses and everything he’s been holding back bursts.

Tony cocks his head and has the gall to look confused. It gives Steve the impression that for Tony, wiping his best friend’s mind was such a routine activity, he’s already forgotten. “Remember what?”

Steve steps closer till he’s inches from being _too_ close. “ _I remember_.”

Tony’s face falls. The room goes dead silent except for the sound of the other Avengers fanning out around him. They don’t know what happened, but they know Steve’s right. At least _they_ trust him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony says, all sarcasm and bluster.

Steve doesn’t. All he wants to do, all he can think about doing, is pummeling Tony into the concrete of the workshop. He wants to punch him so hard that he ceases to exist.

But instead he pauses because Tony leans back just slightly away from Steve, and there's the faintest waver in his voice that breaks through the front he’s projecting. It’s a small thing that would be imperceptible if it wasn’t for all their history. Steve can tell Tony’s worried.

_Tony’s scared._

And under all of his anger, there is a weak part of Steve that wants to comfort him.

To tell him it will be okay ( _it won’t_ ) and that he’ll try and find a way to fix it _(he can’t_ ).

Steve pathetically wants to tell Tony that maybe, someday, he’ll forgive him.

( _He never will_ ).

Because that’s not  _his_ mission.

Not anymore.


End file.
